Karel Čapek's brilliant comic and satirical novel of 1936 deals with the discovery of a sentient race of newts or salamanders, and their subsequent transition from fairground sideshow to forced labour to ferocious enemies of the human race. Along the way he pokes fun at a whole range of targets, from the superficiality of Hollywood to the arrogance of scientists. He also deals with serious subjects such as racism, imperialism and exploitation, and is positively prophetic on the threat of expansionism and the folly of appeasement. This handsome new edition from Benediction Classics uses the acclaimed 2002 translation from the Czech by David Wyllie, with original illustrations.
KAREL ČAPEK (1890-1938) is one of the great Czechoslovak writers of the twentieth century.
What People are Saying About This
Kurt Vonnegut
God bless Catbird Press for calling the attention of Americans to a great writer of the past who speaks to the present in a voice brilliant, clear, honorable, blackly funny, and prophetic.
Arthur Miller
It is time to read Capek again for his insouciant laughter, and the anguish of human blindness that lies beneath it.
Milan Kundera
War with the Newts will never fall into oblivion....Capek is perhaps the first European writer whose novels anticipated the gruesome vision of a totalitarian world.
